{"id":10032,"date":"2016-01-23T15:54:28","date_gmt":"2016-01-23T15:54:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/?p=10032"},"modified":"2016-01-23T15:55:35","modified_gmt":"2016-01-23T15:55:35","slug":"the-vatican-and-brexit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/the-vatican-and-brexit\/","title":{"rendered":"The Vatican and Brexit"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"henry-viii\"<\/a>The Roman Catholic Church has always been somewhat suspicious of the nation-state, an institution it regards as an obstacle to its own claims of universal authority, so this story <\/a>from the Daily Telegraph<\/em> comes as no surprise:<\/p>\n

The Vatican wants Britain to stay in the European Union, the Pope’s foreign secretary has declared.<\/p>\n

Archbishop Paul Gallagher, Secretary for Relations with States within the Holy See, suggested “Brexit” could weaken Europe.<\/p>\n

In an interview with ITV, the English cleric who has a weekly meeting with Pope Francis, gave a clear signal of Rome’s view of the best outcome of the forthcoming in\/out referendum on continued EU membership.<\/p>\n

“The Holy See respects the ultimate decision of the British people \u2013 that’s for the British electorate to decide,” he said.<\/p>\n

“But I think we would see it as being something that is not going to make a stronger Europe.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

No, Brexit would not weaken ‘Europe’, and, if it dealt a blow to the EU (which is something very different), it might well even strengthen it. The EU, based on post-democracy and an ideology imposed from the top, may appeal to the Vatican, but it has evolved into a catastrophe for the peoples of Europe. Under the circumstances, anything that might ‘weaken’ it (and, regrettably, Brexit could easily have the opposite effect) is only to be welcomed.<\/p>\n

As to the Vatican and specific question of Brexit (the UK\u2019s departure from the EU), perhaps it\u2019s appropriate to revisit <\/a>yet again what the British politician Enoch Powell had to say \u00a0back in 1972 about Henry VIII\u2019s assertion of English independence from Rome:<\/p>\n

The relevant fact about the history of the British Isles and above all of England is its separateness in a political sense from the history of continental Europe\u2026When Henry VIII declared that \u2018this realm of England is an empire (imperium) of itself\u2019, he was making not a new claim but a very old one; but he was making it at a very significant point of time. He meant\u2014as Edward I had meant, when he said the same over two hundred years before\u2014that there is an imperium on the continent, but that England is another imperium outside its orbit and is endowed with the plenitude of its own sovereignty. The moment at which Henry VIII repeated this assertion was that of what is misleadingly called \u2018the reformation\u2019\u2014misleadingly, because it was, and is, essentially a political and not a religious event.<\/p>\n

The whole subsequent history of Britain and the political character of the British people have taken their colour and trace their unique quality from that moment and that assertion. It was the final decision that no authority, no law, no court outside the realm would be recognized within the realm. When Cardinal Wolsey fell, the last attempt had failed to bring or keep the English nation within the ambit of any external jurisdiction or political power: since then no law has been for England outside England, and no taxation has been levied in England by or for an authority outside England\u2014or not at least until the proposition that Britain should accede to the Common Market [the future EU].<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Britain did, of course, go on to join that \u2018Common Market\u2019, not least because most Britons did not understand that \u2018ever closer Europe\u2019 meant what it said.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s time to reverse that now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Roman Catholic Church has always been somewhat suspicious of the nation-state, an institution it regards as an obstacle to its own claims of universal authority, so this story from the Daily Telegraph comes as no surprise: The Vatican wants … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[746,15,711],"tags":[1153,920,16,468,410],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10032"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/64"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10032"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10032\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10035,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10032\/revisions\/10035"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}